In-acquisition-mode Elevate land on Levy

Article posted by Coliseum, January 10^th, 2025

Image: Levy & Elevate

The sports consulting agency Elevate has added a new member to its ownership group.

‘Sportico’ stated that Levy, a hospitality company specializing in sports and entertainment dining, has joined the Elevate ownership group which already includes the National Football League (NFL) team San Francisco 49ers, the American sports and venue management company Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE) and the alternative investment firm Velocity Capital Management. The concessionaire joins the cap table as Elevate plans on opening new offices in 2025 to serve a client roster of more than 1,000 organizations.

Charlotte (US)-based Elevate is a full-service consulting firm that inspires high-performing organizations to find their limits and push past them. With expertise in brand consulting, sales, strategy, data-driven insights, and talent optimization, Elevate gives its clients a competitive edge in the fight for people’s precious time and attention. Established in 2018, Elevate set out to help the sports teams and the leagues spark innovation and drive performance. In the years since, the world of sports has transformed today standing at the convergence of media, entertainment and consumer brands with Elevate supporting some of the world’s most ambitious businesses across these sectors.

Levy is a restaurant and hospitality company based in Chicago (US) specializing in providing food and beverage (F&B) to major entertainment and sports venues.

The San Francisco 49ers are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area (US). The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference West Division. The 68,500-capacity Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California (US) serves as their residence.

Camden (US)-based Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment LLC (HBSE) is an American sports and venue management company founded by Josh Harris and David Blitzer in September 2017.

New York (US)-based the Velocity Capital Management is an operationally intensive Middle Market Private Equity firm specializing in the sports, media and entertainment ecosystem. Velocity was co-founded in 2021 by David Abrams and Arne Rees who collectively have more than 60 years of institutional and domain operating expertise.

The Elevate head honcho and 49ers President Al Guido said Levy’s relationships, the current league partners and the data analytics team, the E15 Group, made it an ideal fit. The company expects to provide clients with a robust slate of fan data – “When you start checking off all the boxes it made too much sense not to join forces.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal started as an internal funding round where Velocity increased its percentage in the company before Elevate considered external strategic partners and landed on Levy, the official hospitality partner for the 49ers.

For Levy, owned by Britain’s Compass Group, acquiring equity in Elevate was a natural progression. Both companies have partnered with each other for years on activations and events some of which were held in the Levy restaurants. Compass has more than 55,000 client locations around 45 countries – a footprint that is appealing to Elevate as it looks to become a global hospitality leader.

Added Guido, “Their broad network is appetizing to us. From a North America (standpoint) we feel really good about our services and no doubt will continue to add but with our global ambitions we thought Levy and Compass could really help us.”

‘Sportico’ further stated that this is the latest move for Elevate after three major acquisitions this past year: The global executive search firm SRI, the Fenway Sports Management’s Consulting Group and Zinc Agency (now branded as Elevate Experiences). The six-year-old firm, which also offers expertise in sponsorship sales, consumer analytics, renovation studies, and now executive search, remains in the acquisition mode as it eyes multiple businesses to acquire in 2025.

Elevate has more than 300 employees worldwide and plans to open a headquarter location in Chicago in partnership with Levy which is based there. The firm will also be opening offices in New York City, Nashville and London (UK) in 2025.

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